Burly character actor Ernest Borgnine, 95, died today (July 8). Equally adept at comedy (the ‘60s sitcom McHale’s Navy) and drama (his Oscar-winning Marty, and From Here to Eternity), the bulldog-like actor had been a staple of movies and TV since the early 1950s. Among his many films are The Catered Affair, The Dirty Dozen, The Wild Bunch, and The Poseidon Adventure; young viewers know him as the voice of Mermaid Man on TV’s SpongeBob Squarepants. He is survived by wife Tova, of Home Shopping fame; his third wife (for one month in 1964) was Ethel Merman (“Biggest mistake of my life. I thought I was marrying Rosemary Clooney”). On his acting technique, Borgnine once said, “What you’ve gotta do is find out what the writer wrote about and put it into your mind.”